Soldier's Things
by Falco Conlon
Summary: Lewis Nixon has to return from a war that has turned his world upside down, to a home where he never really belonged. Luckily, he isn't returning home alone.
1. Grateful

It was hot in New York. He was waiting for the train, closing his eyes and tipping his head back and Dick was so quiet that every so often Nix drifted off, only to wake a minute later, having forgotten that his best friend was still sitting next to him. They said goodbye to Buck and Harry at the boat. Buck was heading back west, catching buses and trains and probably a cab or two and Nix is glad to see him go. Things have softened between them since the end of the war, but there's nothing that could make either one of them forget the resentment - Nix's drunken accusations of arrogance and Buck's fist across his jaw.

The jealousy lingered, no matter how hard he tried to forget it. Buck made Dick laugh - about as often as Nix made Dick laugh - but Dick never really put together why the two never got along.

The train was late. Nix straightened on the bench, shifting his duffle between his knees, and turned to look at Dick. The clatter and din of the crowd swelled around them, families heading downtown to go shopping, girls in headscarves out on the lunch whistle, the occasional pocket of drab green flashing through splits in the crowd. It wasn't just the uniforms that make the returning soldiers stick out. Nix could see the look in Dick's face, although it was quieter in his expression than it was in the faces of the men he watched. A kind of confused suspicion, with a hint of awe. Bright hazel eyes were tracking the crowd - watching the children run through the forest of legs, fascinated by the sway of a woman's hips or the hem of her skirt, the click of her shoes. Men's hats and briefcases or lunchboxes. It was like having to remember how to read, the shapes on the page alien again even though you know you had learned this all before.

What did people do if they weren't fighting a war?

"Thirsty?" Nix asked suddenly, realizing he'd been staring at the redhead for the better part of ten minutes. Dick hadn't noticed, but he looked over when Nix spoke.

"Sure." He glanced around, brow furrowing just a touch. "We won't miss the train?"

"It's already late. There's a stand just over there. You watch my stuff, I'll buy you a drink."

"Lew-"

"A soda, Dick, Jesus." Nix laughed and stood, pushing his duffle over to lean against Dick's knee. "I'm not going to buy you a beer in the middle of the afternoon. You know I keep my efforts to get you drunk relegated to the evening."

He strode off before Dick could retort, realizing belatedly that his foot had fallen asleep. The train was very late, but Nix was in no rush. He'd tried to convince Dick to take him to Pennsylvania first - no rush, he'd claimed, why go straight to New Jersey when Dick hadn't seen his family in three years. Wasn't there a girl? Etta? Was that it?

Dick hadn't really responsed. It never occured to Nix that maybe Dick was as hesitant to see his home as Nix was to see his. But they were on their way to Nixon New Jersey because Mr. Nixon had jobs for them both at Nixon Nitrates and Lewis Nixon had never felt quite so trapped in his entire life. He'd survived a war only to go home and slowly rot in a town he hated, in a job he knew he would come to hate.

Except there was one thing keeping him from draining the flask tucked away into his pocket. Nix looked back at the bench when he came to a stop at the vendor selling bottles of pop to the passing travellers. Dick had pulled out a book and had bent his head over it, sitting straight as a rail but tucking his chin into his chest like a boy who knew it was better to restrain enthusiasm for something he enjoyed, but couldn't quite keep it all in. Dick was like that for almost everything in his life, Nix thought. The corner of his lips turning up, the arch of an eyebrow, the speed of his steps - they all betrayed Dick Winters' passion for his work, his friends, his men. Nix had seen it time and time again, shocked whenever he noticed that passion being exerted on his behalf - shocked into behaving, shocked into hating himself a little less.

Sun glinted off the side of Dick's perfectly combed hair and Nix was drawn out of his own head by the shout of the vendor.

"Hey, G.I. Joe - you want anything or what? There's a line, buddy."

The glass of the bottles was cold enough to have his hands aching by the time he returned to the bench, pushing one of the sodas into Dick's face in an effort to get him to look up from the book. "So much for the returning heroes. I asked that guy if he'd give a couple of paratroopers some free soda and he laughed in my face."

Dick smiled gently and accepted the bottle, carefully folding down one corner of the page he'd been reading and closing the book. Nix watched his pale hand smooth over the paperback cover. "They don't owe us anything, Nix."

"The hell they don't."

"They don't-" They'd had this conversation before, but Dick was as patient as ever, "maybe respect, at the most, but we were doing our duty as citizens."

"Yeah, and what was he doing?"

"Someone had to stay behind. The home front was just as important-"

"Yeah, yeah. Drink the damn soda." Nix took a chug off his own before digging into his pocket for his flask. "Woulda tasted better if it were free."

He could fill Dick's eyes on him after another few seconds of drinking his now-spiked soda. Nix always found himself caught off guard when Dick looked at him like that, the very idea that Dick even remembered who he was sort of unbelievable to him. It had the effect of making him antsy so he drank half the soda down in one go, coughing at the burn of liquor down his throat. He cleared the sensation away with a few swallows.

"How much of that liquor did you actually get home?"

Nix looked up in surprise, eyesbrows arched practically to his hairline. "I...uh-" nose wrinkled, he took another drink, "well, you know, sort of figured I should stock up, going home to a divorce and all." His laugh sounded thin to his own ears and he winced. "A lot," he admitted finally, twisting the drawstring of his duffle bag around one finger before the childishness of it made him jerk his hand away. "Shipped it all in one go, actually. Spent my father's money. I'm sure he'll be damn pleased with me when we show up."

"He won't enjoy it too?"

"Oh, he'll enjoy it, but that won't make a bit of difference."

Dick nodded as though he understood this perfectly, although Nix knew he didn't, and looked down into the mostly-full bottle he still held. "Nix, he knows I'm coming, right? I mean, I won't be showing up expecting a job from a man who hasn't offered one."

Nixon sighed and leaned back, kicking his feet out and allowing his head to drop, closing his eyes against the glare of the sun. He pulled his sunglasses from his front pocket and slid them up his nose. The throbbing just behind his temples eased a bit and he began to feel the tingle of the whiskey in his fingertips, as though he'd just come in from the cold. "He knows, Dick. I'm not that much of an ass."

"I didn't mean that." Dick immediately sounded apologetic and Nix hated himself for always reacting like Dick's low expectations weren't warrented. "I know things are complicated between you two, and I just wasn't sure-"

"Five o'clock to Plainfield, five o'clock to Plainfield!" Combined, the conductor and the whistle of the incoming train cut Dick off and ended the conversation. Nix slapped a hand on his friend's shoulder and gave him a shake, not wanting Dick to spend another second feeling bad. His smile was half hearted, but that was only because in an hour and a half a car would be picking them up from the train station and taking them up the hill to the Stanhope Nixon residence.

Nix was half pulling away to stand and grab his duffle, when Dick's hand surprised him - warm and firm over his own fingers where they still clutched at the redhead's uniform. He was grateful for the sunglasses that hid the way his eyes went particularly wide, but when Dick met his gaze, Nix wondered if they didn't hide anything at all. Everything he thought he might need was in that look, in the too-brief squeeze of Dick's hand over his.

He wasn't going back alone.


	2. Defiant

Nix had managed to put off fighting with his father for the first week Dick was staying with them. It hadn't been as hard as he'd expected. A strange switch had been flipped in his father's head now that his son had come home from war having served with one of the better known units in the war. Stanhope had always held a kind of pride for his son - even Lew could see that. After all, he'd done well in school, he won his sailing competitions, he'd volunteered to serve and had graduated from OCS as a 2nd Lieutenant. None of that mattered when they would get into their regular battle royales, however. Nix was a let down, on those days, a disappointment, just short of a complete failure.

That undercurrent was absent in this fight. Some hind part of his brain seemed aware of this as he dug both hands into his hair, shutting his eyes as his father shouted. Stanhope was just angry, and for once, Nix couldn't be sure that he was actually at the root of it. The words battering at him all seemed the same, but the frustrated drive wasn't behind them.

"You need to take this seriously!"

Nix tipped his head back, refusing to open his eyes. "I do-"

"I don't think you do, Lewis! I don't think you do! This is your life now, no more playing around with your army buddies-"

"What Army budies!" Nix finally forgot that Dick was sitting out on the front porch sharing what had to be an awkward glass of iced tea with his mother - who was long since adept at pretending she couldn't hear her son and husband curse at each other. "It's just Dick, Stan. Just Dick! He is the only person I've spoken to in the past week! He is the only person I know anymore. Don't you get that? Katharine is gone back to her parents and she took Jack with her."

"Exactly! And what are you going to do about it? If you had any sense you would bring her back, Lewis, you wouldn't just let her run off with your son."

"She is divorcing me, Stan, what about that do you not understand?" Nix turned, but his father's voice stopped him from actually walking away.

"She can't divorce you if you don't let her! That's not how this works, Lewis, that's not how being a husband works-"

"And what do you know about being a husband!" Lew's voice rose in decible, finally rising above his father's volume, "what do you know about any of this, you damned old fool! You don't know anything!"

He didn't pause to see if his words showed up like a slap across his father's face, to see if they'd landed as he'd intended them. The screen door smacked shut behind him and Dick was already on his feet as Lew thumped down the front stairs. He could hear his friend, polite to the very end, apologize to his mother before Dick's footsteps echoed his on the stairs, then softer behind him on the front walk. Nix didn't slow down, turning a sharp right down the drive. He needed to be off the property, away from the house, his parents, from this nightmare of a life that seemed to be slowly sucking him down into a quagmire.

"Lew-" Nix didn't slow down as he half walked, half ran down the drive, even though he could hear Dick trying to catch up. He hit the road and didn't break stride, crossing it without looking for traffic and pushing into the trees on the otherside. There was a creek about half a mile through the woods where he'd smoked his first cigarettes, drank his first booze, kissed his first girl, basically did everything his father would have hated.

He only slowed his pace once he was certain he wouldn't be seen from the road and Dick was at his shoulder in a minute. They walked in silence, ducking under branches and pushing back brambles, trying to stay on the overgrown path. Their shows crunched softly on old leaves, spot coming mottled through the treetops. His first crashing arrival into the treeline had quieted the birds and there was only the occasional whistle or trill. Instinctively, they walked a foot or so apart although they were perfectly in line. Smaller targets, more ground covered, one round wouldn't take them both out at once. Nix only glanced at Dick once and the redhead was watching the trees, his shoulders back and his jaw set. He wondered if his fingers were itching for a gun. Nix's weren't. They never had. His rifle had been ornamental. He wondered if his father had any real notion of what it had all been like.

The sound of the creek faded in slowly as they neared it, swollen with fall rain, frothy up near the top of the hill where it came over a short fall. Dick and Nix stopped at the same moment on the edge of the slope and immediately Nix could feel Dick's gaze on him.

"You know my dad almost killed a man when he was at Yale?" Nix didn't know why he said it.

"Really." As usual, Dick sounded as though Nix were relating a story he'd heard a thousand times, even if Nix knew him well enough to tell he was surprised.

"Yup. Bashed his head in with a metal bolt. I never really knew why, but I figure that doesn't matter."

Dick nodded once, but didn't say anything. Nix watched him impassively for half a minute, trying to see if the question was there, trying to see if Dick wouldn't balk at this conversation. But Dick never balked at anything.

"Did he ever hit you, Lew?"

"Sure." Nix shrugged, as though he hadn't just been praying Dick would asked, "but never like that. Smack in the face some times. Caught my mom a good one once or twice, but she served him right back, so-" Another shrug. He felt like a seventeen year old, somehow, trying to impress a girl. The thought made him take a step forward, starting down the steep slope to reach the creek. Dick followed without urging.

"Thing is, I might have liked it better if just gave me a good belt every so often. But that isn't what it comes down to. Never does. He just likes to chase me out of the house, make me so angry I can't talk right, like that proves how much smarter he is or something." The last time Nix had spoken about his father like this, it had been with Katharine. Nix came to a stop with the toes of his shoes just barely in the water and thought of David. He brought a hand up over his eyes and tried to imagine himself ever raising a hand to his son.

"He's bitter."

Nix looked up, taken off guard. "What?"

"He's bitter, Lew. He's jealous. You did better in school, right? And you didn't have to leave because you nearly killed a man."

Nix snorted and shook his head. "No, I left to learn how to kill men."

"You left to fight a war. Did your father serve?"

"No, no, he was too young. Well-" he gave Dick a look that was attempting to be smug and only sort of succeeding. "That and he was too busy trying to club a man to death."

"The point is, you've proved yourself in ways he couldn't seem to manage." Dick sat suddenly, catching himself on a downed tree, and started to pull off his shoes. Nix watched him stupidly. Socks off, Dick rolled the bottom of his pants up and stepped into the running water, biting his bottom lip just barely in reaction to the cold. Nix felt his stomach clench.

"Have I proved myself?"

"Yes." Dick watched the water run over his feet, then looked up and his smile wiped the doubt off Lew's face. "You have."


	3. Union

His marriage to Katharine had been beautiful. Even Nix, fairly toasted on the whiskey he'd been sipping all afternoon, had to admit that. She was a beautiful girl, and the church his parents had picked out had beautiful stained glass that cast beautiful dark blues, reds and golds across her face as she stood in her veil, listening to the pastor speak. Nix had been struggling to keep his vision focused, but he couldn't look away from her face. There was such a sweet curve to her lip, and her laughter always reached her eyes.

He hadn't deserved her.

He and Dick had spent the day at the plant, going through paperwork and trying to pretend either of them had any idea what they were doing. That had been reassuring - Nix had sort of figured they would both start in their respective positions with Nix bumbling his way through while Dick immediately took to the role of personnel manager. He was a born leader, after all, and they were both adept with beaurocracy. The trouble was, neither of them seemed to understand why any of this shit ("nonsense" if Dick were speaking) mattered. Plastics and fertilizer and everything a younger Lewis Nixon had dreaded as a college student. He didn't care. He couldn't care, and he found he slept better knowing that Dick Winters didn't really care either. He was dedicated, and his sense of responsibility kept Nix showing up day after day, but Nix could feel the hollowness of their work like the metallic clang of a boxcar door slamming shut.

But at the end of the day - with the late fall sun still high in the sky by the time they had trudged back up the hill to the house - that hollowness had already faded. Dick laughed easier day by day, and while Nix tracked the dark circles that seemed permenant under the man's eyes, he found himself easing into routine in a way he never had before. It was all right to wake up, drink his coffee, grab the lunch that had been made for him and trudge back down to the factories, so long as he wasn't trudging alone.

They sat on the back porch once they made it home at the end of the day, Dick sipping iced tea and Nix sipping whiskey, neither inclined to speak beyond the occasional suggestion of where they could go next. Anywhere but here, Nix felt in his bones. Everywhere, Dick seemed to feel in his. They'd seen the world, but Nix knew Dick didn't think it counted. They'd seen it through blood and grief and Dick wanted to see it through a clearer lens.

The one thing they hadn't talked about yet, unable to find space between world travel, waking war dreams and Nix running from his father, while Dick ran after Nix, was the divorce. Dick hadn't met Jack yet, something Nix couldn't help dwelling on at one in the morning, with his temples throbbing and his veins screaming for a drink. It felt important. Dick needed to meet his son. In a strange way, he wanted Dick to meet Katharine. Look at this, he wanted to say, look at this good thing I had for a while, look at this good thing I helped make. Look at my son, isn't he beautiful?

He didn't deserve him.

The day he finally got the nerve to call Katharine's house, he'd been drinking since ten in the morning. A sunday, a day of rest. Dick was out in the garden, helping Lewis' mother with the garden - hauling out lawn clippings and bringing in soil. Nix had been watching from the window, glass in hand, watching the sun on Dick's hair, watching the sweat slowly stick his shirt to his back, watch the way he handled his mother so carefully. There were callouses on his hands, Nix knew from experience, but he didn't tear the roots of the plants he was asked to move. He gently worked them out of the soil, easing them free with long, pale fingers.

Eventually Nix had to step away, couldn't bear to watch this man any longer, not while whiskey hummed too warm through his veins. It was enough to get him to the phone, and even if he held the reciever in his hand for a good ten minutes before actually dialing the operator, he did dial the operator, did connect with Katharine's house - her parent's house, where she was staying - and he didn't even hang up when it was her father who answered. He asked for her and was denied. He'd been expecting that, and was mostly just grateful the man hadn't hung up on him completely.

His glass had been abandoned on a side table in the living room, but the flask sat - heavy and smooth - in his back pocket, the weight of it as reassuring as it had ever been as he attempted to get more than monosyllabic answers out of Katharine's father. He found himself reaching back to the flask more than once before pulling his hand back. Then again. Then again. He patted it once, listening to the man on the other end of the line speak in muffled tones to someone behind him.

"You can see Jack."

Nix's hand came away from the flask for the last time and he braced it against the wall instead, watching as his fingers curled against the smooth, floral wallpaper. He could see Jack. He'd been preparing himself for a number of things in the days and hours leading up to this telephone conversation, but the actual chance to see his son had not been one of them. The last time he and Katharine had actually spoken - without her parents acting as intermediary - had been before the war. And it had been a fight. His mind began to spin with all the things that could have possibly changed in her thinking to allow this (pity? Guilt? Forgiveness? Had Jack given any hints as to missing his father? Jack barely knew his father), but then Katharine's father was speaking again.

Katharine and her mother would meet him in the town that stood between them, in a large park, and he could see his son - for an hour. While these stipulations were laid out, Nix just shut his eyes and nodded, as though the other man could see him do so. He was in the middle of thanking him when her father hung up, leaving Nix with a lifeless telephone. He touched the flask again, hung up, pulled the flask out, looked at it, put it back, paused, took it out again...

"Who was that?"

Dick's voice brought him out of the struggle, and the flask slid back into his pocket silently. He turned in time to see his friend wiping dirt off his face with a handkerchief. Dick smiled at him and for a split second, Lewis was certain he would throw up.

"Lew?"

"Uh, Katharine's father. I tried the house, today. Did my best to actually talk to her, but of course-" he shrugged as though it didn't keep him up at night, thinking of all the ways he had broken her heart. "They're letting me visit with Jack this Sunday. In Metuchen, though, they aren't bringing him here."

Katharine's family had never liked his family. He knew it was mostly because they didn't want to see Stanhope Nixon. But surely they didn't much trust Lewis Nixon much either. "If you wanted," he continued, pausing to cough, touch the flask, cross his arms over his chest, "um, if you wanted, you could come with me."

Dick watched him in the pause that followed, those blue eyes focused sharply and his expression expectant. Nix shifted his weight from one foot to the other and fought to keep the gaze, as though this were some sort of contest instead of just Dick's way of getting his best friend to say what he really wanted to say.

"I'd like it," Lew said, giving in, "if you met him. I'd like it a lot."

The next smile made Nix as nauseous as the first one had, and he wondered if he looked pale, because Dick stepped up to grab his shoulder, give him a small, loving shake. It was the kind of rough affection he'd always craved from his dad, and had never gotten. Stanhope had barely looked at his son, much less touched him. The smile on Dick's face gained a concerned edge, the pleased glow fading into a slightly creased brow, and he gave Nix another gentle shake, stepping in even closer, until Nix could see the soft, fine, pale gold hair that faded down his jaw from his sideburns.

"I'd like it too," he murmured, making Nix close his eyes in the same way a child does in the hopes he might disappear. "I'd like it too, Nix," Dick repeated, voice reaching him anyway, "I'd like it a lot."


	4. Sweetness

The sun was bright enough that it surprised him into thinking - romantically - that he had never quite seem a day like this one before. The possibility of sharing that with Dick occurred as the sun warmed the top of his dark head and his cheeks burned just a little with potential embarrassment. The thought remained private. Katharine had been talking to Dick for some time now, while Nix pushed his son on the swing, chain clinking reassuringly in the quiet of the park. His son's face was as bright as the day - the was something he'd been unable to keep private, sharing it with Dick upon first arrival, when they'd seen Jack waiting in Katharine's arms. Dick had smiled and nodded and pressed a hand right at the crook of Lew's throat and shoulder. Another gentle shake, another soft twinge right behind his heart, as though these gentle shakes were enough to make his very roots shift in the earth.

Lew's hands were large enough to hold Jack's delicately boned ribs and back between them. With each push on the swing small legs kicked out in delight, bdecause Papa pushed higher than Mama. With each push, Nix felt his son breathe, could hold that breath between his hands.

Katharine's soft laugh was enough to pull his attention from the steady outward sweep of the swing, and Nix paused to look her way. She seemed surprised at the sound, questioning whether or not it had actually come from her own lips. One long-fingered hand covered her mouth as she looked up at Dick in obvious amusement. Nix realized, uncomfortably, that it must have been the first time she had heard her own laugh in some time. Behind the pair, he could see her mother sitting a short distance away - shaded under a large oak. The older woman was watching her daughter closely, her hands clasped tight and restrained in her lap.

Jack was squealing for Papa to push him higher, higher! but Nix could feel the slow creep of his mother-in-law's eyes as they inched from Katharine, to his cheek as he turned back to his son. They held such accusation. They had always held such accusation. There was no trust here, he thought wearily, then immediately asked himself why he thought there would be. Jack's voice brought him out of the self-pity and Nix caught the chains of the swing to bring it to a stop.

"Slide!" Jack chanted as his father lifted him obediently. Dick caught Nix's eyes as he stepped away from the swing set, and he paused - Jack's small arms looped joyfully around Lew's neck. Startled by the affection in his friend's gaze - like the warmth of light after a cloud had passed over head - and hyper aware of Katharine watching them both, Nix turned abruptly. Jack called a cheerful greeting to his mother before he was set at the top of the slide, his father circling around to stand at the bottom.

"How long will you be staying with Lewis, Major?"

He was just now close enough to hear them speak, although Nix had to wonder if Katharine preferred it that way, wanted him eavesdropping as she talked with his one remaining friend.

"Just Dick, ma'am," was the polite response, "I'm not in the Army anymore."

"Well, then, it should be just Kathy," she said, sounding amused at the correction. Nix didn't bother to look, too busy returning Jack to the top of the slide after his frist trip down, but he knew Dick was blushing. Women never had to try hard to make Dick blush.

"I'm not sure how much longer," Dick explained, sounding as though he were trying very hard to avoid using the familiar name for which she had just given him permission, "I would hate to leave. The town is lovely."

"But living with Stanhope..." Katharine said slowly, not bothering to couch her leading question.

_But living with me_ Nix thought bitterly, although he couldn't really know if that was her real intention. He had no faith, was always too unkind to himself, and so unkind to others in turn, so unkind to her because he could not believe that she really wanted him. This had all been explained to him.

There was a long pause from Dick, and Nix glanced over his shoulder before he could stop himself. Immediately, he was met by Dick's smile and while it was only an instant, Nix felt something warm and vaguely terrifying burst like ripe fruit in the hollow of his chest.

"It's not so bad," Dick at the same moment Jack called out gleefully-

"Papa!"

Dick had already gotten into the car. He was driving - even though it was Lew's car. That was just how they did things. Katharine had touched Lew's hand, pulling him gently off to the side, away from where her Mother was bundling Jack back up into his coat after he'd taken it off in the warm sunlight. He couldn't help staring at where her carefully painted nails pressed against his wrist. It was the first time she had touched him since before the war. Five years. Almost five years.

"This could be a regular thing," she said softly, dark blue eyes serious and shadowed under a furrowed brow. "You look better, Lewis. You really look better."

He knew she meant he didn't look like he'd been drinking. He knew she meant she had noticed the absence of the outline of a flask in his back pocket. Nix swallowed hard, nodding once. "I feel better."

"Every Sunday afternoon, here. Or the library, when it gets cold again." Katharine wasn't smiling, but she was still holding his wrist tightly.

Nix had to clear his throat, nodding again, feeling stupid. "Yes. Yes, please. I would like that." She seemed impressed at the lack of a sarcastic response, and he knew the same surprise was showing on his face. "Thank you, Kathy."

Maybe he'd been hoping for a smile, because his gut tightened a little when her expression didn't change. His hand fell back to his side when she let it go, and those dark blue eyes flitted to the car behind him, to where Dick was sitting behind the wheel.

"Tell Major Winters he's welcome as well," she offered, without looking back at Nix.

"Dick, Kathy," Nix corrected. She was already turning to go. "Just Dick. We're not in the Army anymore."


	5. Hands

He didn't think he'd ever really _looked_ at Dick's hands before. He had such long fingers. Such long, pale fingers. He'd counted the tendons in the seconds it had taken Dick to get him on his feet, watched the way their strength had pulled at his shirt. It was already untucked. Nix could smell himself, the sharp, oak tang of whiskey, they way it curled his tongue at the back of his mouth. He opened his mouth, coughed, and Dick's hand hooked under his armpit, tugged. Nix felt his feet stumble as though someone else were in charge of them, but the hand in his shirt twisted even tighter and he stayed upright.

His parents were in bed, weren't they? He hadn't spoken a word to his father in a week and a half. Not since Kathy's lawyer had come to the house, told Nix he had a week to sign the papers, or the whole process would go to court. He didn't want it to go to court. Nobody wanted it to go to court, least of all you, right Lew? C'mon, Lew, be smart. Just sign the damn papers. Let's all just put this behind us. Be a man. Be a man, Lew. Sign the papers.

Nix groaned, a hand to his head, and the grip on him softened slightly. An arm crossed behind his back and he started when he felt warm breath against his ear. At first, he had a mental image of Dick leaning in to speak to him intimately, but when he opened his eyes, he realized it was because he was listing heavily to one side. Dick was still struggling to keep him on his feet since he'd lifted Nix out of the broad armchair where he'd passed out.

"Okay, Lew," he said softly, murmuring as one would to a frightened animal, "okay, Lew. Let's go to bed."

"I signed it." The words came out in a slow mumbled mess and Nix felt Dick nod, the movement brushing his ear. "I signed it. I signed it."

"I know you did."

Nix wished he weren't so drunk. Dick sounded sad, and he knew it was his fault. Dick was disappointed, he could tell. He'd gone so long without drinking, without taking a single sip, and now look at him.

As if to make the point stick, Nix's toe caught the edge of the rug and he stumbled, dragging Dick down with him. His knees ached where he landed, the arm with which he had half caught himself slowly folding as the weight of his own body became too much.

"Nix, on your feet." Recovering from the stumble, Dick was crouched next to his friend, getting a hand back under his arm.

"Should just go to bed," Nix slurred, sinking further and further down into the carpet. Even with him upstairs, asleep, Lew could feel his father's disapproval. _Get on your feet, you slob. You're a disgrace_. Stanhope Nixon might have passed out at the dinner table before, but he damn well never crawled on the floor like an animal, by god. "Should go to bed, Major. I'm not getting up."

"Nix, on your feet." One of those smooth, cool hands touched at his cheek, and Nix looked up, surprised. Dick was smiling at him. He didn't look disappointed at all. A strong thumb stroked a line along Lew's cheekbone, pressing just barely, and Nix could feel his heartbeat against the back of his throat. "Come on-" Dick's voice softened even more, and when he pulled under Nix's arm, this time it wasn't so hard to get up.

"We're both going to bed, Lew." That hand - god his hands were pale, god it was so perfectly cool against his flushed cheek - stayed where it was and Nix watched Dick as he was gently led down the hall to the front stairs. Dick just kept smiling at him. "We'll get some sleep, and tomorrow things won't look so grim. Remember what we talked about last week? Signing it was the right thing to do, for you, for Kathy, for Jack."

"Right-" Nix whispered hoarsely, "Jack. Right. Now I'll see him. Now she won't try to take him away."

"Now you can see him every week," Dick reminded him. Nix realized belatedly that they were climbing the stairs, and almost stumbled again, but the hand on his cheek kept him from looking down at his own feet. Looking down, it seemed, was what made gravity kick in. Looking down made his knees buckle, made his head feel too heavy on his neck. Dick kept his face up.

"I didn't want to sign it, Dick," Nix said, unable to keep from second guessing himself. "I don't want to be divorced. I don't want to be a bad husband."

"You aren't being a bad husband."

"She's divorcing me."

"Is your father a good husband, Lew?"

Nix paused halfway up the stairs to look at Dick, struggling to focus on his friend's face. Dick rarely gave his frank opinion, or attempted to prompt Nix to speak ill of his father. By the same hand, he'd never defended Stanhope either, nor told Nix to stop complaining, but Dick Winters was not someone who shared his mind too often, especially if it would mean speaking negatively about another person.

"No," Nix said slowly, surprised again when Dick nodded.

"Is he still married to your mother?"

"Yes-"

"Then maybe being a good husband sometimes means letting go when it's the right thing to do."

Nix shut his eyes, leaning into the hand that still cupped his cheek, but the world seemed a little steadier somehow. His father held on like fingers clenched in rigor mortis, refusing to give air, refusing to admit he was wrong. Refusing. Refusing. Nix knew what it had done to him, and he saw what it did to his mother. He hated what it did to his mother. Letting go. If only Stanhope could let go, could be a man, and leave all this in the past.

"There," Dick said quietly and Nix opened his eyes to see that he was making his way up the stairs under his own steam, Dick climbing steadily beside him.

Despite some of the fog lifting from his head, Nix still managed to bump into the door frame as he went into his bedroom, and his toe caught on the edge of the rug again. Dick steadied him both times, giving Nix time to slow his breath, before urging him on. He sat Nix on the edge of his bed, taking over unbuttoning his shirt when drunken fingers couldn't get it open without popping off the buttons. Nix kept his eyes shut, mesmerized by the soft noises of Dick moving around the room, the way he pushed messy hair out of Lew's face, away from his eyes. He braced hands in the blankets when he felt Dick pulling on his boots, listened to them thump neatly - one right next to the other, by the door, orderly, keeping the room tidy. He listened as Dick went to the attached bathroom, listened to the sink running, didn't flinch when a cool cloth swept across his brow and eyes, wiping him clean of sweat and easing the headache. Firm hands urged him back onto the bed, and still Nix kept his eyes shut, even when Dick unbuttoned his fly and tugged his slacks down, footsteps quiet on the carpeted floor as he crossed to fold the pants over the back of Nixon's desk chair.

"There," Dick said again and Nix turned his face toward the voice, trembling once when blankets were pulled up to his chest, smoothed down with slow care. The mattress shifted under an extra burden of weight and Nix finally, finally opened his eyes, looking immediately up at Dick, who was unlacing his shoes to leave them on the floor.

"You're staying?" he asked, sounding twelve, feeling twelve, trying to remember the last time someone had taken the time to tuck him into bed.

"I'm staying," Dick confirmed.

Nix sighed, long and ragged, but didn't close his eyes, even when they stung a little, and he had to lift his own hand - sticky with drink, too hot and soft - to press the tears away.

"Go to sleep, Lew," Dick murmured, his voice close, but not close enough. Nix reached out blindly, fumbling for his friend's hand, and caught it tight - not rigor mortis tight, but tight all the same. Dick's palm was still dry, still cool and smooth. He laced his fingers with Lew's and turned onto his side as he streched out next to the man. "Go to sleep-" he ran two fingertips over Nixon's brow, "I'll keep watch."


	6. Strangled

The weeds at the back of the house were taking over. Nix would chain smoke on the porch and watch them grow. He hadn't had a drink in a month. The morning after Dick had left, he'd woken up on the floor of his father's study, surrounded by glass. The smell of booze was overwhelming and it had taken him a while - in the grip of his hangover - to realize that he had broken every single bottle of alcohol in Stanhope Nixon's bar. Scotch had soaked into the carpet, and when he'd rolled onto his stomach in an attempt to climb to his feet, his hand had actually squished into a puddle. First Nix had thrown up into a wastepaper basket, then again because eau du drunk - that special mix of liquor and vomit - had his head spinning. From there he'd hauled himself into the kitchen. With his parents in Florida for the month, there was nothing stopping him from upturning every remaining bottle into the sink. Vodka, scotch, gin, even the cooking sherry, it all glugged into the drain, and Nix watched it swirl out of sight.

The bottle and a half of Vat he'd consumed the night before was the last he'd touched, which was what left him chain smoking on the back porch, watching dutchman's pipe take over the carefully trimmed shrubs. Three weeks earlier, he'd paid the gardener to stay away. He was alone in the house, and saw no one except for Jack every sunday in the park or the library. Kathy had stopped asking him where Major Winters had gone - he had never once responded - and her mother had stopped insisting that she supervise every visit. The divorce was final now, and Kathy had relaxed, as though someone had released the grip they had on her neck. He was that someone, he supposed. Dick would have told him that was unfair, to be kind to himself, but Nix had abruptly realized that sometimes Dick was wrong.

Dick left on a late train, holding out, thinking maybe something would change. Nix hadn't given him a reason - the first time in recent memory he'd proven Dick wrong. He didn't understand, Dick had said that morning, speaking for the first time in a day, when Nix fixed himself an Irish coffee.

"I don't understand."

Nix shrugged and stirred slowly, watching the whiskey thin the thick, black coffee. He was sure he'd scraped his tastebuds away long ago.

"Your parents are gone for the winter, you're seeing Jack more than ever." Nix looked up and met Dick's eyes. His expression told Nix what he didn't want to say out loud.

_I'm here. That's not enough?_

"Can you explain it to me?"

"I have no idea what you want to hear." Nix tapped his spoon on the rim of his cup, taking perverse pleasure in using his mother's nicest china.

"Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Don't placate me."

"Well that's lucky, because I don't know how."

"Lew-"

"Damnit, Dick, I don't know what to say! I mean it - I have no explanations for you."

"But things are going so well-"

"And whiskey still tastes great." He toasted Dick with his cup, hating himself for it, and took a long sip. Dick watched him, spoon abandoned in his plain oatmeal. Nix stared at the steaming coffee, holding the mouthful on his tongue, hoping maybe that the liquor would sink in faster. He'd woken up with a splitting headahce. "You could always have a drink with me."

He regretted saying it even before he was finished speaking. Dick didn't respond and Nix took another long sip. The silence was awful, but Nix just drank his coffee until the whiskey had numbed him enough that Dick could have socked him in the jaw and gotten no reaction. Which was why he didn't move or make a sound when Dick got to his feet.

"I'm going to call the station," he said in his usual quiet tone. The calm saddness in his voice made Nix want to smash a bottle across the table and threaten his best friend with the jagged glass, demand that the man get angry, demand violence. Violence made so much more sense now, more than talking, more than silence, even more sense now than the hum of alcohol behind his eyes. "There should be a seven o'clock down to Pittsburg. I'll catch that one."

"Why leave now?" Nix's voice was dull, horrible.

"You know why."

"I've always been a drunk." He heard Dick inhale sharply. They'd never said it out loud before. "You've always thought I could change. What's different?" His words had gone dry, mocking, but he was too much of a coward to look up. "I could change. I could stop tomorrow, Pollyanna, maybe I'll stop tomorrow."

Dick, who was already dressed, carried his bowl to the sink and for the first time ever, he left it there without washing it. He stood by the counter for a moment. Nix watched his shoes, the neatly tied laces, the buffed toe.

"I think you'll always drink, Lew," he said finally, turning with urgent speed and disappearing out the door before Nix could say anything more. The declaration gathered in Nixon's gut like the congeled remains of Dick's oatmeal. He'd been running from painful confrontations his whole life, had disappeared to escape his own loss of faith, but he'd never once, in all the years they'd been together, forced Dick to escape.

He should have known that when the creaking of the swing was enough to trigger a migraine, it was a sign to take Jack back home to read a book, or have a cup of coffee with Kathy. Dick had been gone for two weeks. There hadn't been a word from him, but Nix remained dry, had his groceries delivered so he wouldn't have to drive by the liquor store. But still no word. Maybe that ws why each creak of the swing was like a nail driving into his skull. Even Jack's laughter was grating, and when he found himself wishing the boy would shut up, Nix had to take a step back, huffing out a startled breath into the cool, fall air.

"Papa, push!" Jack twisted to look back at his father, little hands wrapped tight around the chains of the swing.

Nix swallowed hard and put his hands out, pushed. The chains creaked and he shut his eyes. "Push, Papa!" He pushed, the chains creaked, and Nix twitched, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Hey, Jackie boy. How about the sandbox. I brought a new shovel - you could make that fort you were talking about."

"No, Papa-" the sweet voice was gaining a whining edge.

_His goddamn mother spoils him_.

"I want to stay on the swing. Not the sandbox."

"Jack, you love the sandbox-"

"No!"

_He's goddamn spoiled, ruined_.

Jack was pumping his legs now, getting a little momentum. The chains got back to creaking. "Push me, Papa!"

"Jack!" He caught one of the chains, jerking the swing to an abrupt halt, and Jack squawked, almost falling out. "Get out of the swing! Now!"

Stubborn and digging in, his father's son, Jack's face screwed up in frustration, angry that his father was being so uncooperative. "No, no, no!" Wriggling, he attempted to get his butt back onto the half circle of rubber.

"Goddamn it-" Nix's jaw clenched. It was strange, the tight anger squeezing in his gut. It was like when you stubbed your toe on the lintel - a spine straightening kind of pain, the kind where you wanted to yell, but had to settle for hitting your fist against the wall, or the door sill, or your own thigh. Nix grabbed Jack, lifting him bodily out of the swing. Startled, and with one hand still wrapped around the chain, Jack went suddenly quiet, letting go when his father started off, his son gripped tightly under one arm.

"When I tell you to get out of the swing, you do it!" His grip tightened and Jack began to squirm, whimpering unhappily. Nix got his other arm behind his son's knees, lifting the small body up so he couldn't wriggle free, but Jack was still squirming.

"Papa, _no_!"

"Be quiet! And do as I say!" There was a rough bark in his voice. Jack went stiff before bursting into tears.

Nix froze, holding his son awkwardly as the boy wriggling and wept. Slowly, his arm slackened and Jack slid down, wool coat rucked up to his armpits, and ran off as fast as a five year old could manage in rain boots. Nix watched numbly as his son ran from him, ran until he reached the closest tree thick enough to hid him, and ducked behind it. He could hear Jack sniffling and wondered if his father had ever felt like this the first time he made a young Lewis Nixon cry. Like dog shit on the bottom of a boot.

"Papa, I wanna go home!" Jack wailed from behind the tree, not quite frightened enough to stop making demands of his father. On command, Nix started toward the tree, pausing once he was on the other side before he found the courage to duck under the lower hanging branches. Jack looked up at him, nose running and cheeks red. He scowled at his father, but Nix held out his hand. It was considered warily, but Jack took it after drawing a wool sleeve under his running nose, his bottom lip stuck out in a pout.

"Do you want a hot chocolate?" They would pass a diner on the way back to Kathy's house. Nix wanted his son to forgive him, but he didn't know how to apologize to a five year old. He would just forget right? He had to forget. Nix needed a blank slate.

Jack nodded, sniffing as he walked with his swaying toddler gait, arm lifted with his small hand wrapped in Nixon's. "And a cookie."

Nix glanced down at him with a lifted eyebrow. Jack really was his boy - trying to milk the opportunity for all it was worth. "Hot chocolate with whipped cream. No cookie."

"Okay." Jack smiled blearily as Nix opened the car door, then gave his father a comforting pat on the shoulder while he was lifted into the seat.

"Okay." The door slammed shut with Jack's feet kicking happily, thumping in light, steady rhythm. Nix leaned against the car and took a deep breath. He needed his son to forgive him; for yelling, for being too much like his own father. Nix couldn't be haunted by Stanhope for the rest of his life. He needed Dick to forgive him; for drinking, for being too much like his father. For being too late to see what Dick had been offering.

It wasn't completely unrealistic to think he could live the rest of his life off his father's money. It was an idea that had appealed, once upon a time, when the thought of finding a good job, only to fail at it, was too terrifying to entertain. He could milk Stanhope Nixon for all he was worth instead, never take the risk of failing at anything else besides being a good son. But Dick's departure had him unsure of just about everything. It turned out he could be nowhere near his father, and still be a bastard. He could be sober for the rest of his life, and still be a bastard. Yelling at Jack had proven this. Besides, even with Stanhope in Florida, Nix was hardly free of him. The house was full of drunken ghosts, not a single tabletop, or scrap of linen without the weighted memory of fights and booze. Ironically, Nix had only felt free in Bastogne. Even through bombardments, there had been a kind of freedom. They had been tired, hungry, and stank to high hell, but no one gave a shit - not about being polite, not about money, not about who was a fuck up. Nix didn't want to go to Bastogne, but he really missed the freedom - or what he was calling freedom.

He could imagine what the men he'd served with would say if they knew he was calling that freedom. He was a jackass, really and truly. That he could sit here on his back porch, a full pack of cigarettes next to him and the mild Jersey air fresh with the rain that had fallen the night before and call Bastogne freedom. They'd call him a jackass. An Ivy League, lily-white, jackass.

Nix coughed lightly and ground out the butt of his latest smoke, closing his eyes for a moment. Dick had been gone too long now. It wasn't the drink, it wasn't the work, or the divorce. It was this place. Nix wasn't sure what he'd been thinking, coming back here without fighting at least twice as hard as he had. Unfinished business. He scoffed at that, but all the same there was a twinge in his gut at the thought of Jack, his boy. The one thing in his life he was managing to hold onto. Nix fumbled with the pack of cigarettes, pulling another out with shaky hands, unnerved at the brief, fleeting wish that he'd never returned to Nixon, New Jersey. The sudden strength of the horror at that left him puffing nervously on the cigarette. He couldn't do to Jack what he'd done to everyone else, he couldn't give up. Lew's gaze returned to the twist of dutchman's pipe that was winding up almost every bush and tree in the yard, choking them out. This place, this _house_. He couldn't hold onto it anymore. He'd managed to let Kathy go. He needed to let Stanhope go.

Nix let out a long, slow breath, watching the smoke curl out into the damp air. He needed to go.


	7. Life

He'd considered getting off and turning back every single time the train stopped. The ride from Nixon, New Jersey, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, wasn't really so long, but that didn't mean he didn't have opportunity to doubt, second guess, completely change his mind, only to change it back five minutes later. Part of the problem was that he'd never called ahead, never sent so much as a telegram. Dick had no idea he was coming. Nix didn't even know if Dick was still in Lancaster. He'd had waking nightmares wherein he'd arrived, only to discover that Dick had disappeared out west, found some great job, some great girl, some great anything, far, far away from Lewis Nixon. He would show up at the farm Dick had once described in loving detail, and Dick's parents would frown, look at each other and shake their heads, wondering who this irresonsible young man could be. Certainly not someone good, reliable, kind Richard would have befriended.

Those were the moments when he would actually get out of his seat, go and wait at the door of the train so he could leap off the second the car stopped. Inevitably, he would turn back, move slowly to his seat and remain there for another half hour before returning to the door. He paced the length of the train car multiple times as it carried him southwest, and not once did he notice the stares of his fellow passengers.

Lancaster was bigger than he'd expected. Somehow he couldn't picture Dick calling a city home, but this was definitely a city - certainly bigger than Nixon, New Jersey. Of course, he should have known that it would be another hour before he was actually walking up the long dirt driveway that led to the Winters homestead. From out here, he figured as the taxi pulled away, you would be able to see the glow of the city at night, but not the city itself. No, it was just rolling hills and the thick treeline at the bottom of the slope. Corn swept across the open fields - the stalks still short, too short to sway in the breeze that chased at the heels of the disappearing taxi.

Nix hefted his bag further up over his shoulder and started down the driveway. His feet crunched over raked dirt and he kicked at rocks as he went, his pace slowing the closer he got to the house. Nothing obscured his view of the large front porch and the stately red barn except a few tall oaks. The tree closest to the house had a swing dangling from one of the taller, straighter branches and Nix was suddenly struck by the vivid image of a young Dick Winters pumping gangly legs to take himself higher, high enough to touch the leaves with his toes. Nix paused, halfway down the driveway, and touched his eyes for a moment. A large part of him still couldn't believe he'd done this, still didn't think it was a good plan. He was so scared, he realized, swallowing back a thick lump in his throat. He was so goddamn scared.

The breeze kicked up again as he stood there and tugged at the sleeve of his jacket. Nix let his palm slide down the rough canvas strap of his bag, hefting the weight one more time. Clothes, boots, books, his wallet with cash and a photograph of Jack. No booze - no bottles, no flask. It was as though he could feel the absence of that weight and his hand dropped from his eyes. If nothing else, he owed it to Dick. He owed it to him to make sure he knew Nix was doing something good for once.

* * *

Nix could hear the sounds of the farm waking up. The window was open, the curtains moving, and someone was at the pump near the barn. It squeaked, a dog barked and was shushed. He rolled onto his back and a spring dug into his spine. There were many wonderful things to be said about the Winters homestead, but comfortable beds were not among them. The sound of boots thumping on the stairs had Nix sitting up, the blankets spilling down to his lap. He moved slowly, carefully, as he had ever since he'd stopped drinking, as though still half afraid another headache might burst into life, or that he might simply shake apart should he step wrong. The footsteps faded down the hallway until all Nix could hear was the faint creak of old floor boards. Whoever had been at the pump went back inside, the screen door slapping twice behind them. He put his own feet on the ground and stood, reaching behind him to rub at a spot right in the small of his back.

The boots were still moving around down the hall - a dresser drawer scraped open and Nix crossed his room to where he'd draped his clothes on the back of a tall rocking chair. He opened the door to his room as he buttoned his shirt and stuck his head out. The bedroom at the end of the hall had been unoccupied the night before, but now he could see the shadow of someone moving around. The door was half shut and Nix found himself waiting for it to open, slowly finding each button with numb fingertips. He fumbled once and looked down, tugging gently at the troublesome button until he got it through the eyelet. When he looked back up, Dick was standing in the doorway at the end of the hall, and it was clear from the look on his face that he had not yet been told that Lewis Nixon had showed up, and had spent the night in the spare bedroom.

Nix let his hands drop down to his sides and he didn't know if he'd managed to get every button, or if they were even in the right holes. He met Dick's eyes, drinking in each twitch of surprise, each line at the corner of his eyes, and then - most intoxicatingly - the barest upward curve at the corner of the man's lip.

"I got here yesterday," he said, feeling as though someone else were in charge of his voice, "around four. Your parents told me you were gone for the night, they insisted I stay." He was not the first buddy who'd showed up on their doorstep, apparently. A few men from Easy had come calling in the months since the war had ended - some arriving when Dick had still been in New Jersey, some more recently. His parents had welcomed every single one. Many had stayed a few nights in the very bed Nixon had just occupied. They'd smiled, fed him too much food and waved their hands in dismissal when he'd tried to wash the dishes.

Now, he stood at one end of the hall and Dick stood at the other. He waited for the man to talk, and the fear was almost overwhelming. The screen door slapped again and Nix turned his head to look back through the doorway to the open window. Curtains billowed slightly and a scratching sound - like a dog trying to get inside the house - carried up to his ears. He watched the soft cotton move in the breeze and wondered at how his fingers had gone numb. Nothing had ever felt quite so much like the end before. Not jumping out of a plane into war, not watching men burn, not freezing off layers of skin, not lying on the floor of his father's study in an empty house with an empty heart.

A warm hand slid first over his shoulder, then to his throat and Nix felt a strong thumb press against his jaw, bringing his head back around, so that when Dick leaned in, their foreheads touched, met, and Nix could see smiling green eyes.

Was this forgiveness? The lead in his chest seemed to melt away into the sunlight. Was this what it felt like to know you weren't a monster? Dick's hand was solid, but not heavy, and Nix tipped his head just barely toward the touch of that hand.

"I made it," he whispered, then licked dry lips.

The thumb smoothed down the line of his throat and he felt the muted light of Dick's smile on his cheeks like the first touch of a summer morning.

"I knew you would."


End file.
